Partner evaluation and selection

Publisert 25.08.2014

The Partner evaluation and selection tool helps you structure your partner assessment by benchmarking potential partners against each other — or against your requirements.

Whether you’re evaluating a partner you met at a trade show or five potential partners in a given country, this tool helps you structure information and provide a solid foundation for making your decision.

Partner due diligence

If you are assessing a partner you have met, this tool can help you benchmark the partner against your criteria. Often the tool can also help you define different questions to clarify with the partner to understand the match’s potential.

Open partner search

If you are approaching a new market and looking for the best partner, the following steps are recommended:

Step 1: Prepare a profile of your company to send to potential partners either directly or through an external consultant. If the latter is chosen, conduct a comprehensive briefing of the external consultant to ensure alignment and shared understanding of the task.

Step 2: Conduct a wide screening. You can find partners who match the partner profile here. Often, no partner will match all criteria, so be specific on “need to have” criteria and “nice to have.” Develop a short information profile on each identified company.

Step 3: Conduct a fine screening by going into detail through interviews, during which you can use tools from the next section of the toolbox to understand how your partner would approach the market if entrusted with a task.

Step 4: During the final evaluation process, use the Partner evaluation tool (Excel file). Sometimes you will not end up choosing the partner with the highest score due to personal chemistry or other factors. However, the tool can help you make an educated choice; bring it back to the office so colleagues can contribute to making the final selection.

"In Nigeria contracts are seen more as guidelines, so do not put all your faith in the rules that the contract should be enforcing. This does not mean that the Nigerians are poor business people, it just means that contracts are awarded differently here"